This article is framed in the context of the c0r0na narrative, but that's not why it's important.

The writer of the article, Rochelle Keyhan, has an interesting bio (more info on that at the end). She is a former Philadelphia prosecutor and has been involved with a number of anti-trafficking organizations.

She offers some valuable insider insights into how the fight against human trafficking is falling short, and provides some suggestions on how it should be improved.

https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2020/03/28/sex-trafficking-poses-the-risk-of-spreading-covid-19-to-thousands-of-people/

Sex traffickers snag some 200,000 young people born and raised in the U.S. A good percentage are in Texas. Yet across all 18,000 U.S. cities with police departments, only 800 human trafficking cases are initiated each year, according to the 2019 State Department U.S. Trafficking in Persons Report.

Few prosecutions of sex traffickers occur because traffickers jump state lines and there is no national human trafficking database. Most police departments lack the inter-state data that can identify a trafficking case versus the lesser crime of promoting prostitution in one’s own city.

Sadly, there is little oversight of victims even if they reach out for help. Last year the federal National Human Trafficking Hotline logged 14,000 calls from victims. Many callers were referred to agencies that potentially could help, but we have no data that confirms they did. The hotline has no follow-through component, no feedback loop that makes sure a social worker checks on the caller after a referral, and no check-ins with agencies to see if the caller was indeed served.

Many referral agencies are overwhelmed and understaffed. Was their line busy when the victim called? Was a bed available for the caller, or for more than one paid night in a hotel as a transitional escape? Did the caller leave a name? Few callers have a home address or a phone that isn’t monitored by the trafficker.

She then offers some suggestions to improve the ability to go after traffickers and follow through with assistance for victims.

• Add feedback loops to the national hotline that checks on whether a referral resulted in help. Circle back to the caller, if possible, to see what more is needed to escape the trafficker. It takes courage to make the call, and often at great risk.

• Enable collaborative data among police departments that can help prosecutors convict traffickers that work across state lines. I share my prosecutorial experience with 204 city police departments across 37 U.S. states. Sharing data in a national databank needs to be part of a federally funded effort.

• Allocate resources to keep impoverished young women and men from succumbing to traffickers by providing more safe housing for runaways. If we can quickly build extra testing and hospitals for a virus threat, surely we can build more safe housing for victims of sex traffickers seeking escape.

• Encourage far better oversight of foster homes. Traffickers sometimes place their young victims in a foster home to recruit other kids in the house, so it’s important to have trained social workers interview placements.

Rochelle Keyhan is currently listed as CEO of Collective Liberty, 'an organization that gathers data to help police departments better prosecute traffickers.'

https://collectiveliberty.org/about/staff/

The people at Collective Liberty seem like they are dedicated to fighting for the victims of human trafficking, but I must note that several were associated with Polaris, which some researchers have dug into previously:

https://voat.co/v/pizzagate/2424998

https://voat.co/v/pizzagate/1640875

https://voat.co/v/pizzagate/2474491